The Seba library treats Jug in 6 passages, across 6 authors (including Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, Wilhelm, Richard, Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes).
Jug, WENG: earthen jar; jug used to draw water. Cracked, PI: broken, ruined, tattered; unfit, unworthy. The ideogram: strike and break. Leak, LOU: seep, drip
The I Ching’s lexical tradition defines the jug as the earthen vessel for drawing water, and its being cracked as the precise symbol of unworthiness and failed containing function.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis
If one gets down almost to the water And the rope does not go all the way, Or the jug breaks, it brings misfortune.
Wilhelm’s rendering of Hexagram 48 establishes the jug’s breakage as the cardinal symbol of misfortune — the vessel’s integrity being indispensable to accessing the inexhaustible source of the Well.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
If one gets down almost to the water and the rope does not go all the way,” one has not yet achieved anything. “If the jug breaks”: this brings misfortune.
The Commentary on the Decision confirms that the broken jug signifies not merely practical failure but the symbolic collapse of the means through which the unchanging nourishing center is reached.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
A jug of wine, two baskets of food. Plain earthen vessels. Simple offerings through a window End in no fault. A jug of wine, two baskets of food. Firm and yielding meet.
Huang’s translation extends the jug’s symbolic function to ritual offering and the meeting of opposites, situating the earthen vessel within a context of relational and spiritual exchange.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998supporting
Marion Milner (in conversation) was able to convey to me the tremendous significance that there can be in the interplay of the edges of two curtains, or of the surface of a jug that is placed in front of another jug
Winnicott, channelling Milner, uses the jug’s surface as an exemplary object for the transitional-space phenomena of intersubjective play, where the object’s boundary generates meaningful ‘electricity’ between self and world.
, Playing and Reality, 1971supporting
the second and central day of the festival called Choes, or ‘Wine-jugs.’ It was considered an uncanny day; all the temples were closed with ropes, except for the sanctuary of Dionysos
Bremmer situates the wine-jug at the heart of Dionysiac ritual inversion, where the Choes festival suspends the normal social order and renders the jug a vehicle of liminal, uncanny collective experience.
, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 1983supporting